When it comes to community service, members of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, on average, go above and beyond. Each member of Kappa is required to meet five community service hours per term, but as a sisterhood they average around nine. A large part of this is thanks to community service chair Rebecca Brennan.
In her freshman year, Brennan has used her experience in volunteering to help keep the members of Kappa informed about local community service events and help them meet their hour requirements.
“I really wanted to be involved with Kappa, and I’m a freshman, so I figured I might as well start with something I’m good at,” Brennan said.
Brennan is a family and human services major, a student teacher at Kelly Middle School and is currently interning with Moss Street Children’s Center and student alumni events. As a community service chair, Brennan emails the members of the sorority nearly every other day about upcoming community service opportunities and organizes two to three large community service events per term.
“I love having so much fun volunteering because a lot of people have the notion that volunteering is like a chore, and it’s not fun,” Brennan said. “It’s shocking to see all the people we’re volunteering with so happy to have college students around and truly appreciate what we’re doing.”
On Tuesday, May 21, Brennan helped organize a trip to Alpine Springs retirement community with the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity to play Bunco. She is now planning a community service event with Delta Sigma Phi fraternity to go to an elementary school to have lunch with the children and play with them during recess.
“The events are probably single-handedly how most of our girls get the hours because they’re so much fun,” Brennan said. “A lot of our girls are interns and volunteers in the community, so they just keep doing what they’re doing. But the majority do the big events.”
For Brennan, the contributions to the community will not stop after college. She has plans of going into social work and one day opening her own nonprofit organization.
“I want to start off being a social worker, so the police would always call me when there was an unattended child or an abuse situation, and I would go to the child and make sure they’re OK with clothes, food, etc.,” Brennan said. “Eventually I want to open up my own nonprofit, like a drop-in center for at-risk teens and children, so that they can play games and get tutoring help and all that stuff.”
Brennan believes that the skills and experience she is gaining as the community service chair at Kappa Kappa Gamma will set a valuable foundation for her career aspirations.
“I already had all the community service and volunteering down, but I never really planned anything before and organized events, so I think that’s really going to help me in the future professionally, like planning events and getting people involved rather than just volunteering by myself,” Brennan said.
So as the term goes on, Brennan will make sure that the sorority reaches its hours and that the community is served.